Most Holy Trinity Sunday

In our reading from Exodus, Moses has an incredible encounter with God. Moses didn’t want an abstract knowledge of God, but wanted to know the Person of God, to see the face of God, to learn God’s name. In response, God reveals his innermost name.

Why is this so important? When we know a person’s name, we can enter into a relationship with them. So when Moses learns God’s name, he begins to learn God’s character as well. Moses talks about God’s rich, steadfast love, and those characteristics become a kind of mission statement: “The LORD, the LORD, a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity.” In fact, this “mission statement” from Exodus 34 is the most quoted line of the Pentateuch. Throughout their history, the Israelites have held onto God’s mercy and from that identity comes God’s deeds—his mercy, his kindness, and his steadfast love.

Then in the Gospel of John, we get the famous line about God so loving the world, that he gave his only Son. This highlights two of the key actions of God: first his love, and second, his giving. Through this we learn that love is an action, not a feeling, and that love is expressed in giving.

From all of this we come to realize that God is a loving God who wants to share his goodness with us, so he gives us the Son, who infinitely gives himself back to the Father. This love and mutual self-giving is the Person of the Holy Spirit, for God is love and his deeds are love. God is one God, with Three Persons united in love, and the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of that giving love.

In this passage from Exodus we get just a glimpse of a larger and richer scene in which God grants to Moses, as the mediator for Israel, a forty-day-long mystical experience of himself so profound that it alters Moses’s appearance, causing his face to shine or glow (34:29). In this scene, though prostrate on the ground in adoration, Moses, in a remarkable show of intimacy, can say to this awesome God, “If I find favor with you, O LORD, do come along in our company.” God acknowledges this simple invitation to “come along,” declaring in a later verse, “Behold I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels, such as have not been wrought in all the earth or in any nation” (Exodus 34:10; RSV:2CE).

Unlike Moses, who makes “haste to bow his head” (Exodus 34:8; RSV: 2CE), the Israelites are “stiff-necked” (v. 9), yet God elects them for what he calls a “terrible thing” (v. 10), an awesome display of his grace and mercy at Sinai and beyond. Through them, in their Messiah, Jesus Christ, he will reveal the inner secret of his eternal mystery of personal communion, of which the covenant he forms with this people is but a faint reflection. But already, in Moses, we see that covenant communion with God is transformative in the deepest sense. Not only does it make his face glow, but it also makes his life of surrender to God a magnificent beacon for the whole human race down the centuries.

In our Second Reading, from the Lectionary we get a very similar message to the passage from Exodus in our First Reading.. St. Paul, in effect, exhorts the Corinthians not to be “stiff-necked.” If they will mend their ways and live in love and peace with one another, then “the God of love and peace” will be with them. In order to have God remain “in our company,” we must remain true to the great commandment of the new covenant to love God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves. From its foundations, one of the primary characteristics of the Church has been the love that its members show for one another.

That shocking love displayed among early Christians was one of the clearest signs that God had bestowed his special grace upon them, and it gave the Church a tremendous gravitational force, attracting new adherents at a surprising rate. If we don’t see a dramatic harvest of souls in our own day, ought we not to ask ourselves whether our love for our neighbor would shock anyone enough to cause them to investigate the Christian life? If not, then what we need is more of the “love,” “grace” and “fellowship” of the three Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—to which St. Paul commits the Corinthians in the closing words of this passage, which also closes the entire epistle from which it is drawn.

God so loved the world...” This is one of the best known phrases from the Bible. It’s not at all uncommon to see “John 3:16” on placards at sporting events or even on roadside billboards. It has become emblematic of the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ because it tells us in brief about the whole of salvation history and the Father's plan for the human race. In Jesus, the Father’s only Son, the Father announces not only his intent to save the world, but also his very divine identity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the Person of Christ, these two dimensions of the Gospel, redemption and revelation, are intimately united. By revealing who he is, God simultaneously reveals his saving love.

The God who loves us to the end—as St. John will later say in Chapter 13 in his Gospel —reveals the depth of that love first in his self-revelation to us that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Out of the immense fire of love that God is in himself—the eternal exchange of love between the three divine Persons—comes the saving love of Christ's Incarnation. The pierced side of our Savior on the Cross pierces our hearts to reveal the essence of Trinitarian love. The immensity of the divine love, in both its redeeming and revealing dimensions, fills us with the confidence that he comes not to condemn the world, but so that we “might not perish but have eternal life.”

MEDITATION:

In the reading from Exodus, we are told that the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and rich in kindness and fidelity. Do you think God is merciful in your life? Slow to anger? In what ways have you experienced God’s kindness and fidelity? How does this description of God’s character help you grow in your relationship with God?

RESOLUTION:

Consider all the ways that God has been gracious, slow to anger, and kind to you. You may want to write down these things this week so that you remember them and can see how God is intimately involved in your life.

Opening the Word offers prayers and insights for the Sunday Scriptural lessons. Watch the video presentation that accompanies this reflection FREE at
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